"The butler has the knife but he is not the mastermind of the plot. Of course it made a great upheaval in the Vatican to know that the personal assistant of Pope Benedict XVI, Paolo Gabriele, is involved in the affair, and in the Vatican they say that they found at his home many documents coming from the Papal apartment. But it is clear that there is not only one man but a group of Monsignors and employees of the Vatican who are following a line of underground opposition to the Secretary of State Cardinal Bertone."

"The personal assistant, as everybody knows in the Vatican, was known as, and is a very loyal person, a very good person, a very honest person, with a lot of integrity. And he began his career from a very low position, he was cleaning in the Vatican and then slowly he came and was brought by the personal secretary of John Paul II, Monsignor Dziwisz."

9. Pan down from St.Peter's Basilica to Vatican press office statement giving the name of Paolo Gabriele

Storyline

The Vatican confirmed on Saturday that the pope's butler had been arrested in its embarrassing leaks scandal, adding a Hollywood twist to an already remarkable tale of power struggles, intrigue and corruption in the highest levels of Catholic Church governance.

Paolo Gabriele, a layman who lives inside Vatican City, was arrested on Wednesday with secret documents in his possession and was being held on Saturday, Vatican spokesman the Reverend Federico Lombardi said in a statement.

Gabriele is often seen by the pope's side in public, riding in the front seat of the pontiff's open-air jeep during the pope's general audiences.

Lombardi said Gabriele had two lawyers representing him as the Vatican judicial system takes its investigative course.

The "Vatileaks" scandal has seriously embarrassed the Vatican, at a time in which it is trying to show the world financial community that it has turned a page and shed its reputation as a scandal plagued tax haven.

Vatican documents leaked to the press in recent months have undermined that effort, alleging corruption in Vatican finance as well as internal bickering over the Holy See's efforts to show more transparency in its financial operations.

But perhaps most critically, the leaks have seemed aimed at one main goal: to discredit Pope Benedict XVI's No. 2, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state.

"It is clear that there is not only one man but a group of Monsignors and employees of the Vatican who are following a line of underground opposition to the Secretary of State Cardinal Bertone," Marco Politi, author of "Crisis of a Papacy" said.

The scandal took on even greater weight last week with the publication of "His Holiness," a book which reproduced confidential letters and memos to and from Benedict and his personal secretary.

The Vatican called the book "criminal" and vowed to take legal action against the author, publisher, and whoever leaked the documents.

The Vatican had already warned of legal action against the author, Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi, after he broadcast letters in January from the former No. 2 Vatican administrator to the pope in which he begged not to be transferred for having exposed alleged corruption that cost the Holy See millions of euros in higher contract prices.

The prelate, Monsignor Carlo Maria Vigano, is now the Vatican's US ambassador.

Nuzzi, author of "Vatican SpA," a 2009 volume laying out shady dealings of the Vatican bank based on leaked documents, said he was approached by sources inside the Vatican with the trove of new documents, most of them of fairly recent vintage and many of them painting Bertone in a negative light.

At a press conference this week, Nuzzi defended the publication and said he wasn't afraid of the Vatican.

In a related case, the president of the Vatican's bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, was ousted on Thursday by his board.

Sources close to the investigation said he too had been found to have leaked documents, though the official reason for his ouster was that he had failed to do his job.